The prior art hopper devices used to supply material to an apparatus for use in the apparatus generally concerned themselves with solving the problem of dispensing the material from a loaded hopper into the apparatus. These devices solved this problem in various ways. The device of the Mihara et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,244,561 connected a hopper directly to an opening in the top surface of a tank via a valve located at the bottom end of the hopper to selectively dispense the material held within the hopper into the tank. The device of Porter U.S. Pat. No. 2,973,319 discloses an inlet pipe, including a shut-off valve, leading from a hopper to the upper portion of a tank in which the material is deposited. As with the Mihara '561 device, this valve allows for selective dispensing of that material from the hopper into the apparatus where the material is used. Geraghty et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,151,000 discloses a reciprocating feed plate, located underneath the bottom opening of a hopper, that is used to urge the feed material from the hopper into an adjacent device for use.
While these devices are useful in dispensing material from large hoppers, they are impractical for smaller scale applications, such as dispensing salt into a water softener brine tank. Furthermore, none of these prior art patents discloses any apparatus or means that may be used to place the material into the hopper. In large-scale applications, material can be loaded into a hopper by a piece of heavy machinery, such as a crane or the like. However, when a hopper is utilized as part of a much smaller application, such as to supply water softener salt to a household water softener system, the problem of loading the material into the hopper becomes more difficult to solve. For example, in most instances, a brine tank of a water softener system can be loaded only by an individual, or individuals, carrying containers of the material, typically 40-80 lb. bags of salt, to the water softener system in the basement of a house and manually dumping the salt into the tank. As containers of the salt can weigh significant amounts, this method may be beyond the capacity of a large segment of the population due to the weight of the salt bags and the height of the tanks, who then must find another way to load the salt. Furthermore, if a storage hopper is used with the system, so that the brine tank does not need to be continuously loaded by hand as the salt level recedes, the hopper is normally positioned higher than the brine tank to facilitate dispensing of the salt, forcing an individual to raise the salt container even higher for the material to be placed in the hopper.